For months, Instagram has been watching closely to see what happens to rival TikTok under a new federal law banning the app in the United States. Instagram swooped in on Sunday when the law took effect.
The social media app owned by Meta has announced a new app called Edits. It's a video editing product that looks like a clone of CapCut, which is used by millions of people to stitch together short videos for TikTok. CapCut and TikTok are owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance, and the US has come under scrutiny for these apps for national security reasons.
“There's a lot going on in the world right now,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a post on the platform Sunday. “No matter what happens, we believe it's our job to make the most engaging creative tools for video makers.”
TikTok and its sister apps CapCut and Lemon8 have long been profitable social media apps in the United States. TikTok, which has 170 million users in the U.S., said in court papers that it could not afford to be in the dark, even temporarily, because it would put it at a competitive disadvantage in one of its largest markets.
TikTok, CapCut and Lemon8 were unavailable late Saturday, hours before a federal law banning TikTok took effect, but on Sunday after President-elect Donald J. Trump said he planned to issue an executive order this week. To delay the ban, TikTok briefly reinstated it.
TikTok's competitors didn't wait to get out of this situation. Mosseri explained that Edits is specifically designed for creators to edit videos on their phones and save ideas for other videos they might post later.
Mosseri said creators can use editing features to create videos and post them to their favorite platforms, not just Instagram. Influencers often used CapCut to create videos and post them to multiple platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Mosseri said Edits will be available for pre-order on the Apple App Store starting Sunday, and the app will be available for Android in February.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken publicly about watching the TikTok dilemma unfold. His Silicon Valley company has hired lobbyists to argue that American tech companies must come first as part of winning the high-tech competition with China.
Meta's chief marketing officer said in a meeting with employees last week that the company needs to prepare for the possibility that TikTok users will migrate to Meta's app, and has allocated staff and other resources to such possible developments. He also said that it should be appropriated. Instagram also changed its layout last week for some users, formatting content into a tall rectangle reminiscent of TikTok.
Instagram has long been bent on emulating TikTok's success. In 2020, Instagram launched Reels, a near-exact clone of TikTok's main short-form video format. Reels has grown to be one of the most popular features on Instagram and Facebook.
A recent survey of 2,500 consumers by TD Cowen found that US internet users said they would most likely watch Instagram Reels if TikTok was banned. According to the survey, 29% of respondents said they were interested in Reels, 23% spent more time on YouTube Shorts, and 15% said they would look for new apps.
Instagram's dominance appears even more pronounced among advertisers, with 56% of ad buyers telling TD Cowen in last quarter's survey that their clients most wanted to advertise on Reels this year. Another 24% favored YouTube Shorts and 20% favored TikTok.
Madison Malone Kircher contributed reporting from New York.
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